


Turning and turning in the widening gyre

by Mariquita



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Dubious Consent, I'm Sorry, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 23:21:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9209951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mariquita/pseuds/Mariquita
Summary: "Yo,” Vera says, gently rubbing the buzz cut at the back of Elliot’s head with his thumb. “She’s in a better place now."(Set after Season 1, Episode 5.)





	

If there is one thing Fernando Vera can be proud of, it’s that he’s a man of his word. “One big happy happy,” he had said over the phone. Him, Elliot, Shayla. He had kept his word. Except that he failed to mention the fact that Shayla was already dead, stored in the trunk of Isaac’s car.

Vera watches as horror floods Elliot’s face and he retches up what little he’s had to eat the whole day. Vera almost feels sorry.

He steals a glance at Elliot now cowering in the backseat, eyes darting from side to side. He must be calculating his chances of surviving if he opened the door right now and jumped off the speeding vehicle. Vera recalls that he had done it once before. He survived, obviously. Now it’s become one of his go-to anecdotes at parties, but he never mentions that it had been an attempt to take his own life. The story’s been rehearsed, preformed and enhanced so many times that Vera sometimes wonders if it happened at all. He glances at the deep scar running across his forearm and his face breaks into a grin. Maybe suicide is genetic. When he was 8 years old, his mother had slit her wrists open.

The street is quiet when DJ delivers them at Elliot’s street. The night air is cool when Vera steps out onto the concrete. It’s been a while. Three months to be exact. He breathes in. Spring. Flowers must be in bloom upstate.

He follows Elliot through the front door and up the flight of stairs to his floor. Elliot walks slowly, deliberately. Vera can almost hear him thinking of a way out of this. He imagines it’s like walking the plank. You take your time. After all, there’s nowhere left to go but off the deep end. He had been there so many times.

Elliot stops dead in his tracks when they pass by apartment 4D. Vera doesn’t need reminding who it belongs to.

 _“Belonged,”_ Vera mentally corrects himself. He can see Elliot panicking, and there must be bile rising in his throat again. Vera’s all too familiar with the feeling, too, specifically with his first kill. He would walk by the dark alley he’d left the body in and he’d be shaken to the bone. Since then, he’d been more level-headed; he’d more or less learned how to bite down the urge to heave. _“Better them, than me,”_ he’d say. It was his totem, the memory of that first kill.

He clasps the back of Elliot’s neck and Elliot visibly jumps.

“Yo,” Vera says, gently rubbing the buzz cut at the back of Elliot’s head with his thumb. “She’s in a better place now.” And he sincerely believes that as they enter the apartment.

 

***

 

He takes it all in. The bare walls, the furniture that have seen better days, the appliances that won’t work half the time. It’s almost like coming home. He’s convinced now more than ever that in another life, he and Elliot might have been related, cut from the same cloth.

“This is where it all happens,” he says, as he approaches Elliot’s set up.

Vera doesn’t understand computers. He knows the basics like every normal human being—you press a button, connect to a network, and you’re one with the world. For the longest time, that was all they were to him, a means of connecting and a cost-effective way of propagating the business. It had been Isaac’s idea, him being younger and more in tune with the changing tides.

 _Isaac._ Vera laughs bitterly. Well, that’s a story for another time.

He reaches out and touches the keyboard almost reverently. If there’s power here, he doesn’t feel it. It’s plastic, just like his own computer at home. The real power is of course with the one who wields it.

Vera remembers the meeting with his lawyer. She had printed out all the evidences and kept them in a two-inch thick dossier. All their tweets masquerading as innocent social media babble. They’d been at it for a year now. It was supposed to be foolproof. It was supposed to be visible only to those who would care to look. But someone outside their circle took the time to decode “clickety clickety” and “sea shells.” As his lawyer droned on and on about strategy, about avoiding supermax, there was one photo Vera couldn’t keep his eyes off. _A prescription bottle._ It wasn’t long after that that he was able to make the connection. _Shayla_. _Morphine. Suboxone. Re-ups every three weeks._

“So that’s who you are,” he had whispered to no one in particular. _A god that had come down to earth, the second coming._

He turns to look at Elliot who is still standing near the doorway and Vera can’t control the maniacal laugh that tears through his throat.

“Why are you still here?” Elliot asks, in a voice so tiny Vera can hardly hear him.

Vera shrugs and heads for the couch. Why indeed? Vera’s not entirely sure himself. But one thing is clear. He has to be near Elliot, has to feel him, has to drink some of his light and be a part of his universe. This is the only way he knows how: He pulls out a package form his back pocket and tosses it on the low table.

“H,” he says casually as if he’s simply handing Elliot a business card. He plops himself down and motions at the ziplock.

“A gift from me to you.” He pats the empty space beside him.

When Elliot doesn’t move, Vera pulls out a gun from the waistband of his jeans and sets it down beside the ziplock. He can see Elliot’s gaze shift from Vera to the loot, and back to Vera again.

There is no fear there. Vera can only read complete and utter hate in Elliot’s eyes.

“Sit down, Elliot,” he says, more firmly this time. After a beat, Elliot complies. He lowers himself down slowly, steadily, as if he’s sinking himself into a tub full of scalding water. And he’s sitting side by side with Vera.

 _China white. Big H. Dope. Junk._ Vera remembers the first time he tasted it, and the first time he took a dick in his mouth to pay for it. He also remembers the first time he lost a brother to it, the first time he’d had to kill for it. Its been a part of his veins for so long he can probably snort his own blood and still get a high from it _._ But this load isn’t for himself. If there is one thing Fernando Vera is good at, it’s at sharing his blessings.

He makes good time in cooking and setting up a clean rig. Within minutes, he’s holding up the syringe to the light and the brown liquid almost looks like gold.

“I don’t want this,” Elliot says feebly but doesn’t resist when Vera starts unzipping his hoodie. Up close, he can tell from the bags under Elliot’s eyes and the thin sheen of sweat on his face that he’d just been through the worst of his withdrawal. That’s just too bad.

Vera takes off his own belt and loops it lightly around Elliot’s arm. He smoothens the skin on the inside of his elbow and notes that it is clean, which doesn’t really come off as a surprise. Vera knows that Elliot is smart enough not to mainline, but Vera also believes that everyone should experience it at least once in their life. He tightens the belt around Elliot’s arm and taps once, twice, until a vein protrudes. He sets the needle parallel to the vein and hits home during the first try. He loosens the belt and slowly, slowly, pushes down on the plunger.

Vera watches as Elliot takes in a sharp breath, his head rolling back exposing his neck. He whispers out a soft and exquisite “ _Oh fuuuck,”_ and his voice makes the pit of Vera’s stomach stir. Yes. _That_ rush. Better than morphine. Better than sex. A whole lot better really than life itself. It makes him hard just thinking about the fact that it’s him doing this to Elliot through the drug.

“Damn,” he says as his hand starts palming his own dick through his jeans. “Look at what you’re doing to me, bro.”

He leans in to draw a wet stripe along Elliot’s neck with his tongue. His other hand, the one not busy working himself, grabs Elliot’s jaw to draw him nearer. He starts sucking at the skin right under his ear where Elliot’s scent is more pronounced—a mixture of sweat and something metallic, like blood. He likes it and for a fleeting moment wishes that he can bottle it. He works at the spot long enough to make sure it’ll bloom into a contusion tomorrow. A classic hickey. He almost laughs at the foolishness of wanting to mar something to claim it. But isn’t that what we all we do as human beings, ruin everything we touch? Like what his father did to their mother, driving her to a corner with no other way out but to put a blade to her own skin.

He can feel the little gasps Elliot is making through his throat and Vera knows he’s trying to make that rush draw out longer. But he’s coming down fast. Vera detaches his mouth from Elliot’s neck and chuckles.

“Didn’t I say it’ll be one happy happy,” and he’s slipping a hand down Elliot’s jeans. That catches his attention and he turns to look at Vera, eyes half-lidded. Vera doesn’t know anymore if the look he’s giving him is one of hate or something like need.

Elliot’s voice is thick and heavy when he finally says, “Jesus, just fuck me already,” and Vera loses it.

 

***

 

It’s been a long day. Vera can feel the beginning of a headache. He’s half leaning down, a pillow cradling his back when he reaches over to the nightstand and grabs a dirty ashtray. He picks at the contents and settles for a half-smoked joint. He’s tired, he realizes as he slowly exhales smoke. He can feel his body crashing. He looks to his right and Elliot is beside him, all fucked out and asleep. He doesn’t even remember how they ended up in his bed, which really is just a bare mattress on the floor.

How many hours have passed? He doesn’t know. One moment, he had Elliot bent over the couch. He was telling him that when he arrived in prison, he promised himself he won’t be like the rest of them, pairing off with a twink just to pass the time. He thought it was funny, now that he had his cock sliding in and out of Elliot, drawing low, keening sounds out of him. Elliot had told him to just shut the fuck up and fuck him harder. Which Vera did, graciously. It had hurt enough to draw blood, he knows. He also knows that it had been what Elliot wanted. His terrible version of penance.

Vera catches himself running a hand through Elliot’s hair down to his neck where in the half-light he can already see a bruise forming.

He hears sirens wailing from a distance and he knows it’s dangerous to stay any longer. He hesitantly removes his hand and sits up fully, lining his back with the wall.

“It’s a bad neighborhood,” Elliot’s voice pierces through the semi-darkness. And more quietly, “She was too good for this place.”

Vera doesn’t have an answer to that. He imagines that in a parallel universe Shayla’s still alive. She’s being promoted in the ad agency she works in. So she meets her boyfriend for lunch nearby and she tells him the news. In the middle of the busy street, he tells her that he couldn’t take it any longer. There’s a moment of fear in Shayla’s eyes, but her boyfriend is going down on one knee, and he’s taking a small box out of his pocket…

Vera’s not evil. He simply knows how things work. Shayla had to go because she disrupts the balance in the world. And maybe that is a good enough excuse, so he tells Elliot just that. He turns to look at him grinning, as if Vera just said an awful joke. He looks more lucid this time, no longer quite sedated.

Vera doesn’t know who started it but Elliot is still slick with come when he enters him a second time. He watches as his face distorts when he finally bottoms out. He knows that it probably is more painful now without the numbing effect of the drug. So he starts fucking him with deep and slow strokes, almost like how he would fuck someone he actually loved.

“Harder,” Elliot is hissing while bucking up in an attempt to make Vera quicken his thrusts. “Just… harder.”

“No,” says Vera as he pins Elliot’s hips down and continues his maddeningly slow pace. Elliot results to begging and Vera has no other way to shut him up but to force his tongue in his mouth. He realizes that it's the first time that they're sharing a kiss after everything that has already gone down.

When he breaks the kiss, he knows that he’s about to come.

“You promise me you’ll be the good in this world, all right?” he is saying as he buries his face in the crook of Elliot’s neck. “You promise me that…” Elliot’s face is wet and Vera doesn’t want to know if it’s only sweat or tears.

“You promise me, Elliot,” he says again as he gives a particularly hard thrust and he is coming before he can wait for Elliot’s answer.

 

***

 

Dawn is breaking when Vera steps out into the street. DJ is already asleep in the car. Vera enters the passenger side and DJ wakes up with a start.

“Let’s go,” Vera says as he pushes the window down. He can hear the sound of the city coming back to life.

“Where to?” asks DJ stifling a yawn.

Vera pushes the seat back and reclines the backrest. He can feel his body crashing and there is a memory so faint in his mind of his mother singing him to sleep. She is crying as she brushes the hair off his face. She is telling him to be the good in this world, to not let the darkness get him.

“Yo, boss, where to?” DJ asks again, starting up the engine.

“Shit, DJ,” Vera says, and he’s already half-asleep. “I don’t fucking know.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title has no connection with the content. Probably. But it's from a poem by Yeats. I just thought Vera was a really interesting character, hence this. Also, I'm sorry. And, yeah, kids, don't do drugs.


End file.
